Nobody cares about your story. They don’t care about mine either. The truth is that what people care about is themselves.
That might sound harsh, but it’s a truth that could save your coaching business. Coaches are repeatedly told that sharing their personal story will build rapport and attract clients. It’s one of the four pieces of business development advice many (most?) coaches receive from their coach training provider.
If we’re taught anything about client acquisition, it tends to be this:
- Share your story to build rapport
- Deliver discovery calls (for free)
- Network extensively
- Talk to as many people as possible about your business
The problem is that this approach fundamentally misunderstands what professional marketing actually is.
Holding Professional Boundaries
I often see coaches wildly oversharing on this platform. This kind of post is inevitably liked and commented on by all the coaches we’re connected to, who talk about how ‘bravely vulnerable’ the coach is. That doesn’t mean this oversharing is marketing – far from it.
In the same way that we don’t want to know that our doctor is unwell too, what we really want is for her to help us get better, potential clients don’t want to know how broken we are/were. Whilst sharing our knowledge and understanding of our potential client’s situation is important, our own transformation stories communicate that the focus of the coaching relationship will be on the coach’s journey rather than the client’s needs.
There is only one star of your marketing show, and it’s not you – it’s your potential client. Clients want to know we can help them – they don’t much care about our back stories.
What Story-Sharing Actually Communicates
When coaches share personal transformation stories as their primary marketing message, they’re inadvertently communicating several problematic things:
First, they’re showing potential clients that they might still be processing their own issues rather than being fully present for their client’s work. Second, they’re demonstrating that they view coaching relationships as mutual healing experiences rather than professional services.
Most importantly, personal story-sharing isn’t focused on any audience at all – it’s focused entirely on the coach. It’s the opposite of client-focused marketing.
Poor Marketing Advice For Coaches
Coaches cling to story-sharing with grim determination because it’s what we were told would work during coach training. Even when it’s not generating results, we remain convinced that if we tell our stories more vulnerably or more compellingly, it will eventually connect with clients.
As we continue sharing our stories with whoever will listen, we feel encouraged when other coaches in our network engage with our posts. We don’t understand that having coaches engage with our posts isn’t helpful – it’s certainly not effective marketing. We’ve never learned the difference between personal sharing that builds professional credibility and oversharing that undermines it.
Networking Without Strategy
Following this limited playbook, coaches also network indiscriminately. By indiscriminately, I mean that we attend every networking event we can find and introduce ourselves as “a coach who can help you reach your goals and overcome limiting beliefs and mental barriers.” When no one shows interest, we conclude that either no one is interested in coaching or that the market is saturated.
Becoming Visible
Coaches operating this way make another crucial mistake. We operate under the mistaken belief that everyone sees everything we write on platforms like LinkedIn. We lack a clear understanding of focus, audience curation, and proper marketing principles.
In reality, we’re broadcasting to a tiny fraction of our connections – and most of those connections are other coaches. The fact is that most of what we write is invisible to the people we hope will be intrigued and want to engage us as their coach. Personal stories often get lost in the ‘noise’ because they’re not targeted at a specific audience.
Client Acquisition That Works
As professional coaches, we can share carefully curated glimpses of ourselves that help potential clients see we’re ordinary people with normal lives. Photos of pets, graduation pictures, or travel snapshots serve a strategic purpose – they create safe engagement opportunities without requiring people to “out” themselves as having problems we solve.
These strategic personal shares are entirely different from using trauma stories as marketing content. One builds professional credibility while maintaining appropriate boundaries, the other makes the coach the centre of attention in ways that repel potential clients.
The Effective Alternative
Effective coaching marketing focuses on client challenges, not coach experiences. Instead of let me tell you how I overcame anxiety, effective coaches write content like (for example) here’s what anxiety looks like for marketing directors in pharmaceutical companies, and why traditional stress management advice doesn’t work in your environment.
The first approach hopes people will relate to the coach’s experience. The second demonstrates understanding of the client’s specific professional context. Only one of these approaches actually builds credibility with potential paying clients.
Just Because It FEELS Right…
Story-sharing feels like the right thing to do because it’s vulnerable, authentic, and personal. However, just because something feels right doesn’t mean it’s an effective client acquisition strategy. If personal story-sharing were all we needed to do, the 82% coaching business failure rate wouldn’t exist.
The coaches who succeed learn to shift their focus from their own transformation to their clients’ challenges. They understand that professional credibility comes from demonstrating expertise in helping client resolve specific problems, not from sharing how they solved their own.
Your story might be inspiring, moving, and genuinely transformational, but it’s not a marketing tool, and treating it as one keeps you trapped in conversations with other coaches instead of building a business that has a pipeline of paying clients.
The choice is yours – continue hoping that the right person will connect with your story, or learn to speak directly to the challenges your potential clients face in language they recognise and trust.
An Opportunity
If you’d like the opportunity for robust conversation about this, why not join my next free challenge Nail Your Niche? There’s even an option to upgrade to a VIP version, which gives you 3 x 60-minute group mentoring sessions with me – which gets my eyes, and my brain, on your thinking
Are you ready to challenge your thinking around sharing your story to build rapport? Register for the challenge by clicking here.
Recent Comments